This invention applies to pull straps for the interior of automobiles and trucks. These include pull straps for closing doors and assist straps on door frames or seat backs to provide hand holds for people entering and leaving vehicles.
Automotive pull straps must meet high standards of strength, durability, and appearance. This has previously required resilient steel support elements providing the necessary tensile strength and an assembly of padding, surfacing, and seaming elements wrapped around the support strip and secured together with dielectric heating. The result simulates a padded leather wrapping stitched in place, but the preferred materials for present pull strap covers are resinous.
Style also requires that pull straps have a firm side facing the automotive interior and a soft side that the user's fingers engage. Present construction of pull strap handles is shown in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,952,383; 3,977,054; and 4,174,988.
My invention provides a pull strap meeting all strength, quality, and appearance requirements and formed more economically with molding operations, rather than assembly operations. My invention aims at a pull strap handle that is competitive in every respect, including lower cost from faster and more efficient manufacture using less labor and fewer separate components.